The present invention disclosed herein relates to methods for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease, and more particularly, to methods for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease using a biomaterial.
As the average length of life increases globally in these days and the society structure enters the aging society, Alzheimer's disease that is the most common form of dementia, i.e., senile neurodegenerative disease, has drastically come to the fore as social-economic and medical issue. While the current medical techniques fail to treat Alzheimer's disease or stop pathologic progress, it is possible to alleviate the progression speed of Alzheimer's disease and thus treatment is focused on such alleviation. Up to the now since the early 1900s when this disease was found, studies on Alzheimer's disease have been performed in various fields such as biology, biochemistry, cognitive ethology, etc., and importance of early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease begins to emerge in recent years. Early diagnosis and caring of Alzheimer's disease is the best way able to decrease psychological and financial burden and to improve the quality of life in terms of a social-economical aspect as well as a personal aspect.
An existing diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease depends on time-consumptive and complex evaluation methods, such as a clinical evaluation, psychological testing, brain imaging, discrimination from other neurodegenerative diseases, etc. In this regards, detection of a molecular level biomarker that may confirm the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, discriminate the pathological severity degree in patients, expect the progression rate of a disease in patients, and monitor the progression state is the most useful way. Such a molecular-level biomarker should have a neuropathological basic characteristic, and sensitivity and specificity that are second to the clinical diagnosis level. Also, the molecular-level biomarker may be said to be ideal when it has reliability and reproducibility and a sample including the biomarker therein is extracted while accompanying low cost, noninvasion and easiness. Examples of existing Alzheimer's disease-related samples may include skin tissue, rectum tissue, bone-marrow, spinal fluid, etc., and collection of these samples may be said to be unsuitable for regular clinical diagnosis.
For example, a brain imaging technique using a high resolution brain imaging apparatus is an existing diagnosis method of Alzheimer's disease. The early diagnosis method of Alzheimer's disease using the brain imaging technique studies the preciseness of the brain imaging apparatus by scanning the brain of a suspected Alzheimer's disease patient to measure abnormal accumulation of beta-amyloid protein and comparing and analyzing the measured results with autopsy results of brain tissue after death. However, since this image-based diagnosis method requires a patient to pay high cost and discrimination is performed in a state that brain contraction or damage is progressed, detection of a disease is late. Another representative diagnosis method is a diagnosis of spinal fluid and measures a change in amount of beta-amyloid protein in the brain and spinal cord. However, the inspection method of the brain and spinal cord itself is known to be a very painful method, and is blamed for dangerousness accompanied during the inspection.